I watched the entire election last night, well into the wee hours of the morning, and my heart was so very heavy. I wanted to scream. I knew going into this election split voting would be an issue, and so I encouraged people to pair vote, which might have alleviated the threat of a Conservative majority, but not enough people know the service exists. This is what we all feared when the election was called.

While I was overjoyed to see the NDP win a record number of seats in Parliament, I’m saddened by the thought that, as the official opposition, they can act merely as a conscience to the Conservatives rather than the force I know they can be. With that said, Layton has promised to bring back decorum and civility to the House of Commons, and I hope this goal sees more productive conversations taking place rather than the yelling matches that have long made a mockery of Canadian Parliament. It’ll be hard for the NDP to show Canadians what they’re made of when Harper has a majority govn’t, but their perseverance over the next four years might see them finally take over Harper in the next election. With all the damage I’m sure he’ll do, I can only hope Canadians will vote to fix Canada next time!

I knew the NDP’s success might be at the cost of Liberal seats (Harper predicted as much), but hell, the Liberals have been using this scare tactic for ages (“a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives”), and we were just damn tired of it. Change was needed! However, I optimistically thought the Conservative numbers would drop (how could they not when Harper was in contempt of Parliament?!) and a head to head with the Liberals and NDPs would have transpired. This was obviously not the case.

What upsets me is that some people are blaming the NDP for the Harper majority since people who regularly vote Liberal thought that if they voted NDP (the popular choice this election) they could prevent the worst result from coming to fruition (although some regular Liberal voters went blue because they thought the Conservatives were the lesser of two evils!). What people need to realize is that our electoral system doesn’t work. It isn’t proportional and fails to represent Canadians. How much sense does it make that 60% of voting Canadians voted against Harper and yet he gets to have a majority government with only 39% of votes? It’s absurd. Out of 308 seats, the majority are in Southern Ontario, which voted predominantly Conservative. How does that reflect the interests of Canadians?

And as a final rant, I’m so very disappointed to see such low voter turnout. While the last election saw only 58% of Canadians vote, this year was no better with only 61%. I really thought the youth would take to the polls in droves to change tuition hikes and disappearing education funding. I also anticipated more women voting, seeing as how Harper has cut funding to almost all the groups and organizations that help women, especially Aboriginal women and victims of domestic abuse. Not to mention I thought more women would vote if only to halt the threat of Harper’s abortion laws that would cease our rights over our own bodies! *sigh* I could go on, but I’m only working myself into a tizzy.

Jack, please show us what you can do. I look to you to keep Harper’s evil in check even with both hands tied behind your back.

Unfortunately, some analysts indicate that in addition to some progressive vote splitting, blue Liberals may have chosen to vote Conservative to block the NDP (at least in Ontario).

We’re looking to the NDP to hold the line on progressive legislation so that the Cons can’t turn back the clock too much. But they are going to need a lot of activist teaspooning – letter writing, speaking out, and protesting – to back them up. Because if it looks like the citizens don’t care and aren’t engaged, nothing the opposition does will matter.

Unfortunately, the Canadian progressive/political blogosphere is currently full of outraged bloggers pointing fingers at each other and calling other progressives vermin for voting for the “wrong” party. The voices of reason are being lost in the vitriol.